mystical synthesis Techniques of Mythical Synthesis

[Nozbat]

Does anyone know where I can get some information (no matter how small) on the Techniques of Mythical Synthesis?

In Well of Deliath Jeff has written..

The cults of Chalana Arroy, Issaries, and Lhankor Mhy received much of this largesse. These cults were also an important conduit with the God Learners. As a result, God Learner knowledge was widely disseminated and the techniques of Mythical Synthesis embraced. Much of what we know of the Monomyth was preserved by EWF sources.

https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/notes-on-the-empire-of-the-wyrms-friends/

There is a Rune of the Mythical Synthesis Movement Rune

I can't find any more direct information.. so help would be appreciated

 

[mfbrandi]

So we are looking for techniques of practical syncretism?

• Have a vision — make it viral (Monrogh’s Elmal = Yelmalio Barnesian meme war)
• Switch deities without making waves (God Learners’ Great Goddess Switch caper)
• Frankenstein’s build-a-god-from-offcuts kit (Seven Mothers’ moon jigsaw)
• Remake a god in your own image (Arkat takes a hacksaw to Zorak Zoran and achieves … what, exactly?)
• Bolt the gods of “uncouth” polytheists onto a monotheism as saints (Western Genertela’s own take on Haitian Vodou)
• The Amazing Collapsing God trick — generational and sibling variants available (including but not limited to the centripetal Earth Mother)
• The pantomime horse: x is really y in a skin (AKA “Orlanth eats his daughter”, but this may just be a case of the ACG trick)
• Comparative mythology with meticulous footnotes

That sort of thing? Some of these are better than others — I was attempting a brain dump — and I guess in practice the techniques fail at least as often as they succeed.

I have my doubts over “but they have the same runes” — it is probably wrong, and it is definitely boring. Let’s retire it.

The only countermeasure that springs to mind is the incredibly lame “I am not her”/“that is right, she is not me” routine pulled by Dendara–Ernalda. Probative value = zero, but you never know what Gloranthans and Gloranthaphiles will fall for. Don’t suppose magical power tracks truth. (Pick an election … any election.) 😉

I suspect @scott-martin has his own research programme and could disgorge a few techniques into a suitable receptacle if you know the secret handshake Geoff Muldaur used to teach.

[jajagappa]

2 hours ago, Nozbat said:

I can't find any more direct information.. so help would be appreciated

See the Guide p.503.

"The vast range of religions which the Jrusteli encountered in their travels and conquests were of great interest to the scholars of the island. It was quickly discovered that many religions contained amazingly similar myths and gods, even though they had never met and were separated by oceans, mountains, and languages. Sorcerers began formulating a philosophy to investigate this, and developed the Mythical Synthesis Movement. This was an attempt to identify and define the gods and spirits of the world so that they could be manipulated and controlled. The investigators in this process were commonly known as the God Learners."

Basically it is the development of the Monomyth (largely described in the Cults of RQ: Mythology book), the union of various myths, and how to use the maps of Mythology to jump from one myth to another.

[mfbrandi]

8 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

Basically it is the development of the Monomyth

The MSM™ is the monomyth research programme, but religious syncretism — lower-case mythical synthesis — in Glorantha didn’t start with the God Learners, did it? And I guess some of it was pretty ambitious if Jeff is right to include the Nysalor project.

The tale of the Great Compromise is a primo bit of mythical synthesis. I cannot at the moment recall whose idea that was. It seems like the sort of thing that ought to have been a God Learner invention, but did it predate them?

I Fought We Won also seems to stem from a syncretic impulse. Who won the battle? We all did, whatever it might have looked like if you had been there (which of course you were).

[John Biles]

It's what lets Lhankor Mhy take the magic of sorcery and turn it into 'not evil sorcery at all' so they can use it without lynching.

With Chalanna, it's likely the ability to absorb healing magics from all over and non-magcal healing techniques too.

36 minutes ago, mfbrandi said:

I Fought We Won also seems to stem from a syncretic impulse. Who won the battle? We all did, whatever it might have looked like if you had been there (which of course you were).

The spread of Theyalan Missionaries basally incorporated every group's personal last stand story into the I Fought We Won, including non-human victories.

 

[Alex]

8 hours ago, John Biles said:

The spread of Theyalan Missionaries basally incorporated every group's personal last stand story into the I Fought We Won, including non-human victories.

And started the process of building a unified Orlanth cult.  Rebuilding from an earlier shattered unity, or building from scratch?  The distinction's moot unless you're running not even a Dawn Age game but a a Storm Age one.  So for all practical purposes other than playing The Gods War, the distinction is one of taste.

The acme of the Synthesis is when not only does it combine (for example) all the theistic myths into one 'web' of such, but one gets the idea of four different 'worlds' -- the theistic, animist, liturgical and renunciate ones -- that originate entirely separately then meet.  That's not quite how it's primarily currently presented, admittedly.

[John Biles]

34 minutes ago, Alex said:

And started the process of building a unified Orlanth cult.  Rebuilding from an earlier shattered unity, or building from scratch?  The distinction's moot unless you're running not even a Dawn Age game but a a Storm Age one.  So for all practical purposes other than playing The Gods War, the distinction is one of taste.

Not so much a unified Orlanth cult as the unified Storm Pantheon.  And its inclusion of Gods with zero storm in them, like Lhankor Mhy.

 

34 minutes ago, Alex said:

The acme of the Synthesis is when not only does it combine (for example) all the theistic myths into one 'web' of such, but one gets the idea of four different 'worlds' -- the theistic, animist, liturgical and renunciate ones -- that originate entirely separately then meet.  That's not quite how it's primarily currently presented, admittedly.

That's a God-Learner creation, though I do believe the Great Compromise fused multiple realities together with the All Myths are True principle.

The God-Learners risked destroying the world by their efforts to boil things down to the Monomyth in violation of that.

[mfbrandi]

27 minutes ago, John Biles said:

[T]he Great Compromise fused multiple realities together with the All Myths are True principle. The God-Learners risked destroying the world by their efforts to boil things down to the Monomyth in violation of that.

If I donned my God Learner tinfoil hat or propeller beanie, I might say, “We were not violating the all myths are true principle. We were saying that — contrary to the lies and ignorance of the splitters and fight-pickers — all myths are one and that myth is true. It was a grand unified theory, baby. If They wiped us out, it was because there were things They didn’t want you to know.” Before: general relativity and quantum theory. After: quantum gravity (or insert favoured theory glue here).

Removing the questionable headgear, how do we know why the Middle Sea Empire was destroyed? (Especially if we are Third Age Genertelans.)

[Scotty]

15 hours ago, Nozbat said:

I can't find any more direct information.. so help would be appreciated

That was the only article not tagged (now fixed). Here's the Mythical Synthesis tag for the Well of Daliath.

[Nozbat]

I've been mulling this over (in between the floorboard stuff). Thanks for all the comments so far (I like the idea of tinfoil hats and propellor beanies .. @mfbrandi.. I'm off to get one from my local Conspiracy Shop)

There appears to me to be two strands in this .. the EWF and the Jrusteli .. I didn't give the context to Jeff's quote, which I'll do now for those that didn't look at the WoD (blue and green)

The Third Council was incredibly rich (far richer than the Dara Happan or Carmanian empires), and the outer ring were great patrons of culture and building projects. The cults of Chalana Arroy, Issaries, and Lhankor Mhy received much of this largesse. These cults were also an important conduit with the God Learners. As a result, God Learner knowledge was widely disseminated and the techniques of Mythical Synthesis embraced. Much of what we know of the Monomyth was preserved by EWF sources.

Chalana Arroy, Issaries and Lhankor Mhy clearly collaborated with the EWF Third Council even though it was apparent what direction they were heading with the defeat of the Traditionalists in 775. These Traditionalists were their fellow Lightbringers. It would be a further two generations until the Inner Council demanded to be worshiped as gods and suppressed all other worship. The source of the magical power and knowledge was Draconic Mysticism which to my knowledge  was not mythical synthesis. I can understand Lhankor Mhy and Issaries motivations for collaborating up to the Third Council edict but I do not understand Chalana Arroy's involvement. The EWF had  already been accused of being aloof and lacking compassion, an anathema to any Chalana Arroy cultists surely?

The second strand is that the same three cults were implicated as conduits (and collaborators) with the Jrusteli God Learners.

By 680 ST, there were some 200,000 colonists on the island of Jrustela, and another 25,000 or more in Umathela. The Jrusteli were proud, self-assertive, and confident – they had already begun the Mythical Synthesis Movement, an attempt to identify and define the gods and spirits of the world so that they could be manipulated and controlled – the start of the God Learners.

https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/a-short-history-of-jrustela/

The God Learners were not hiding their motivation and interests. Likely they surprised people with how far they would push mythology and thus brought about their own destruction.

Why these three Cults...again? And again I can understand Lhankor Mhy being fascinated with the classification and order implied and imposed by the God Learner mystical synthesis. But they were timid and beyond sorcerous mastery of the Truth Rune did not look at other potential sorcery roots. It was almost as if classification was enough. Issaries is difficult to understand what their possible motivation would be, and again Chalana Arroy's involvement seems to be an antithesis of what the Cult stands for.  

No matter what I think, all three Cults were involved in different strands of mysticism from two opposed and often warring Empires. For the God Learners, the Cults disseminated knowledge and techniques of mystical synthesis. Where is this reflected in the Cults we know today? They were clearly influenced by both movements and seemingly eagerly collaborated.

Lhankor Mhy was clearly the crossover to the EWF.

Now in Dragon Pass, some of the key resources of the God Leaners – like the Lhankor Mhy cult – were also perfectly willing to work with the EWF.

https://wellofdaliath.chaosium.com/notes-on-the-empire-of-the-wyrms-friends/

How was the (limited) knowledge of the monomyth, a God Learner construct, preserved  in EWF sources? They were enemies and are unlikely to have given up their magical secrets to each other unless Lhankor Mhy betrayed their secrets? 

Draconic mysticism, or whatever they learnt from the EWF, is also not reflected in any of the Cults, yet they seem to have been intimately involved. 

There is no clear trajectory of development and magic with all this new knowledge. Was it lost after the Dragonkill War and the Inundations? Were they afraid to use it for fear of recrimination from other Cults who were the victims of the EWF?

 

[Malin]

7 hours ago, Nozbat said:

Why these three Cults...again? And again I can understand Lhankor Mhy being fascinated with the classification and order implied and imposed by the God Learner mystical synthesis. But they were timid and beyond sorcerous mastery of the Truth Rune did not look at other potential sorcery roots. It was almost as if classification was enough. Issaries is difficult to understand what their possible motivation would be, and again Chalana Arroy's involvement seems to be an antithesis of what the Cult stands for.

As you say, the Lhankor Mhy cult's obsession with classification and knowledge makes them natural for this. And I think it's not hard to see how Issaries, if we look at the aspects that work with communication, understanding, and negotiation, would get deeply involved in a project like this even if they weren't the theoretical driver behind things.

Chalana Arroy however... In my view what her cult shares with the others is a powerful and driving ideal. What if parts of the cult at the time saw this mystical synthesis as a way to heal the damage that had been inflicted on the world? All the wars, all the conflicts, all the religious persecutions? Wouldn't it be good if we could all agree on how things were and how they fit together, and maybe people would finally understand each other? A bit like the Mostali world machine problem but for the human spirit and mythic consciousnessness. A bit like the Nysalor project, but working with what you had rather than make something new? Bring the world back into harmony? It wouldn't be the first time horrible things were done with utopian goals in sight. The Harmony rune can be as dangerous as Disorder.

Edited November 13 by Malin

[Alex]

7 hours ago, Nozbat said:

Why these three Cults...again?

The obvious line-of-best-fit to try to draw here is Lifebringers/Lightbringers -> heroquesting -> Runequest Sight.

6 hours ago, Nozbat said:

How was the (limited) knowledge of the monomyth, a God Learner construct, preserved  in EWF sources? They were enemies and are unlikely to have given up their magical secrets to each other unless Lhankor Mhy betrayed their secrets? 

Surely the point of the monomyth was that is was anything but a secret.  You promulgated it both to bum about your successes -- publish or perish!  if I get my citation index up I'll get tenure and a nicer office!! -- and as part of the experimental process itself.  You smoosh two 'different' cults together.  Is the result more than or less than the parts?  That tells you how good or bad an 'identity' it was.  Can't do that by keeping the idea a secret!  Their techniques for (re)constructing it often were, but that's a very different thing.

And who are you going to great pains to spy on but your enemies?

6 hours ago, Nozbat said:

Draconic mysticism, or whatever they learnt from the EWF, is also not reflected in any of the Cults, yet they seem to have been intimately involved. 

Isn't it?  How do we know -- in the case of either empire?  We'd need some sort of editing blamemap, or at least a 'before' and 'after' diff so we could at least guess.  We do not.  Much less a complete such so we can say unambiguously if the 'synthesis' is actually 'correct' or just a pragmatic bodge.

[mfbrandi]

7 hours ago, Nozbat said:

Chalana Arroy, Issaries and Lhankor Mhy clearly collaborated with the EWF

Perhaps best not to overthink this. Medicine, trade, and the academy are no respecters of national borders, and their cultists are likely literate and welcome in all but the most headbanging of communities. So natural conduits for any ideas. And if you were an empire, wouldn’t you put money into medicine, trade, and the academy?
 

7 hours ago, Nozbat said:

The source of the magical power and knowledge was Draconic Mysticism which to my knowledge  was not mythical synthesis.

If mythical synthesis is just religious syncretism, weren’t the EWF heavily into that? Dragon emperor of Dara Happa? And weren’t there “draconised” versions of cults ostensibly non-draconic? Orlanth’s dragon-slaying as utuma — an EWF idea? Perhaps as well as being God Learners, we are all Wyrm’s Friends, now.

[scott-martin]

On 11/9/2024 at 4:52 PM, mfbrandi said:

a suitable receptacle

I owe you mail of course but life on these biologics has become "one long shining thread of coincidence" so the days flash by like color gels at the end of 2001 or the last days of disco. This means packing the response takes a little more effort. 

For me the core technique is what people have been talking about here, the associative property of initiation. Start with a broken world where nothing exists but the local community and a yearning for an unbroken primal scene. You will only have access to the magic held in the heads around you, which is probably not a huge pool of points. So you go out to see what's out there. This is incidentally the "rune quest."

You'll see things that are initially more or less strange to you. Sometimes they remind you of people and things you remember from home. You figure out the way they operate to the point where you can learn local spells and maybe teach what you brought with you. Mythical synthesis has been achieved. The rest is really engineering . . . memorizing the known tricks of identity like trigonometric ratios. 

Of course mythical synthesis was only one of their core techniques. "Demonization" (they would have said pseudospeciation) ultimately became an important instrument of priesthoods of the one god to ensure that recalcitrant localities could be reduced or at least kept on the periphery where they couldn't become a problem. And there were others also, to wax a little greggian. 

14 hours ago, Nozbat said:

blue and green

What I really loved in the original quote was the possibility of reading that fourth sentence not so much as part of a clear flip to the green but as hinting at a profound reciprocal exchange: GL knowledge was widely disseminated [and in exchange] the sophisticated version of Mythical Synthesis that evolved inside EWF was embraced within the MSE. This is of course not the correct way to read it but suspending reality for a little time allows us to ponder how exactly the dragon version of Mythical Synthesis works and whether the work product differs. 

For an exchange to have happened, EWF must have been able to generate insights (magic) that MSE found difficult to replicate, and vice versa. And since EWF deep magic beyond "they were into dragons" is less well explored in the books than its GL equivalent, this is fertile mythic territory even if it turns out that most of the exchange was actually green heads for blue shoulders, so to speak. (Maggie Smith reference.) The rock in the river shifted under our feet but we were still able to use it to get across the river.

The core of the blue insight might be those universal lightbringer gods who did not have altars within the omphalic Mrelar Amali complex (for example) and so needed to be imported into the western elemental cults or reinvented as your leverage inside any foreign system. Looking for a historical origin for these "power rune" figures always breaks down in the paradox that their relevance to any local mythic system is universal and retroactive . . . once you find identify their potential somewhere, it's as though they were always there from the beginning and all you are doing after that is comparing archaic regional expressions to make sure nothing got lost along the way. 

Which might be the EWF Mythical Synthesis hiding in plain sight, or one of the more important techniques: a focus on the monomyth as unfolding space rather than as time, a web and not a lineage schematic. Proto Orlanth / lightbringerism becomes the power to assemble a "pantheon" (IFWW) and the dragon vibe [technical term] makes that power transitive. But anyway, the important thing here is that at least one of the traditional power rune figures is missing from that Jeff quote: 

Where is Eurmal and who or what is the flesh man really?

We know MSE was very, very invested in Trickster and very, very invested in lineage / mortality magic . . . to the extent that I initially assumed that the difference between MSE and EWF Mythical Synthesis was that the MSE pursued genealogical models (the pantheon descent trees that can be shuffled to generate a Tanian for example) and so the EWF version would be something else.

But Trickster may have been the equivalent of a trojan horse in the long war of civilizations, MGF.
 

7 hours ago, Alex said:

either empire

Never ended!

--------------------------

Dragon Vibe® is a registered mark and intellectual property of the Modern Reformed Hepherones Academy (MRHA) and is used here with permission. No challenge to the MRHA's rights should be inferred or implied. An earlier version of this material was disseminated in error without this disclosure. We regret the error.

 

Edited November 13 by scott-martin
compliance called

[Nick Brooke]

Blue and Green? Bah! Green and Purple!

 

[svensson]

11 minutes ago, Nick Brooke said:

Blue and Green? Bah! Green and Purple!

 

I see Cmdr. Ivanova has been heard from 😆

[svensson]

You know, from a strict fan perspective, I've always wondered about this consistent under-theme in Glorantha of finding some sort of Grand Unifying Magical Field Theory.

Every magician, from a Jrusteli God-Learner down to a 15 year old new initiate learning Heal 1 manifestly knows that 'magic works'. You spend 'x' resource [MP, RP, Time, whatever] you get 'z' result. All the rituals produce roughly similar results. And there is no 'easy' system of learning or using magic... Spirit /Battle Magic has its own hurdles just as Malkioni Sorcery does. And every time a group of magicians tries to mish-mash all the systems together, you end up with some kind of apocalyptic event.

So it just seems to me that all this magical synthesis or monomyth experimentation is just human nature poking a stick at the fuse of an unexploded bomb to see what happens next.

Edited November 18 by svensson

[jajagappa]

1 hour ago, svensson said:

So it just seems to me that all this magical synthesis or monomyth experimentation is just human nature poking a stick at the fuse of an unexploded bomb to see what happens next.

Curiosity killed the God-learning and Draconic cats, so to speak.

[Nozbat]

1 hour ago, Nick Brooke said:

Blue and Green? Bah! Green and Purple!

 

I'm Irish..its the colours of Irish Nationalism.. so that Blue and Green should never be seen..  but I can go with the Women's colours Purple (justice, dignity, loyalty to the cause) and Green (Hope) 

[svensson]

22 minutes ago, jajagappa said:

Curiosity killed the God-learning and Draconic cats, so to speak.

Also, FAFO.... 😆

[Alex]

2 hours ago, svensson said:

You know, from a strict fan perspective, I've always wondered about this consistent under-theme in Glorantha of finding some sort of Grand Unifying Magical Field Theory.

I've long suspected that the 'Monomyth, perfect or garbage?' debate is one that divides not just many Glorantha-nerds, but ran througgh the mind body and soul of every Greg!  He clearly found the idea attractive as a device for understanding mythology, He also clearly found it something that it was very easy to over- and misapply.  How much is too much?  I think either he was rather conflicted and kept changing his mind on that...  or else did a very good job of confusing the rest of us on that!

[svensson]

14 hours ago, Alex said:

I've long suspected that the 'Monomyth, perfect or garbage?' debate is one that divides not just many Glorantha-nerds, but ran througgh the mind body and soul of every Greg!  He clearly found the idea attractive as a device for understanding mythology, He also clearly found it something that it was very easy to over- and misapply.  How much is too much?  I think either he was rather conflicted and kept changing his mind on that...  or else did a very good job of confusing the rest of us on that!

Yeah, that's kind of what I mean....

In many ways the Monomyth was too easy a narrative device. And let's be honest here... in 99% of RQ games the issue never comes up. Most players don't want to dig down to that level of 'grog-ness' for the simple reason that it has nothing to do with their characters unless they go fishing for it. In a Tolkien sense, it's like worrying about the metaphysical implications of Melkor's interactions with Feanor when you still have cope with what you're gonna do with this Ring.